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Most successful salespeople hate to quit. They have an innate competitive instinct that refuses to let them admit defeat easily, one which also motivates them to welcome and take on challenges. For example, rather than fearing objections—as many ordinary salespeople do—exceptional salespeople welcome them as a challenge to overcome. There is one challenge, however, that they don't welcome— and that's the challenge of initially engaging cold prospects who refuse to be engaged, and re-engaging already-engaged prospects who have gone dark during an established sales opportunity. They don't like either of these scenarios because prospect engagement is, to a large degree, out of their control. Unlike other aspects of the sales process, such as discovery questioning and presenting, where the salesperson is in control, he or she can't control whether a prospect picks up the phone when they call, returns a message when they leave one, or replies to an email when they send one.

So what's a salesperson to do when a prospect is or becomes unresponsive and disengaged? At a high level, it depends on whether you're in the prospecting phase, or if you're further along. If the former, two factors dictate how persistent the salesperson should be: the size of the pool of available leads of comparable value available to you, and whether the account has been designated to your salesperson as a key account. If you have a boatload of such leads, you're better off moving on after two or three attempts. That's because there is an opportunity cost to spending time continually trying to engage the same (questionably interested) prospects. With a finite number of hours in a week, the time you spend on these prospects is time you won't have to spend trying to reach other prospects who are interested in and need what you're selling.

When Throwing in the Towel Is Not an Option

If, on the other hand, there are a limited number of key or named accounts and you or your sales employees don't have the luxury of moving on to other accounts, try other, indirect ways of reaching the person. For example, identify someone in your network who can make an introduction on your behalf. Or call into a different area of the account, and ask to be transferred to your target individual (transfers from inside an organization are assumed to be from a fellow employee, and thus are unlikely to be ignored). Try conveying information completely unrelated to your product that you think would be valuable to your prospect, but which he is unlikely to come across through his normal channels. Also, don't put all your eggs in one basket; try to establish contact with and engage other people in the account you suspect would be involved in an evaluation of your solution. Then that person can get your primary target sold on taking a call or meeting with you.

In either case, you need to consider that the reason your outreach may be ignored is that the message you're leaving or sending is not compelling enough to provoke a response. Think about it: the people you are trying to reach are being inundated with sales messages like yours from other salespeople day-in and day-out. Make your message stand out by sending something that'll get them to stand up and take notice. (For examples on how to leave compelling messages and write compelling emails, click here to read "Sales Showdown: Email vs Voicemail.")

When a Prospect Goes Silent Deep in the Sales Cycle

Now, when your prospect becomes disengaged when you are deep into a sales opportunity, it needs to be handled very differently. In this situation, evidently something has gone wrong. Typically, it's one or more of the following:

They are leaning towards or have selected a competitor

You or someone at your company has said or done something that turned them off

You failed to develop a strong personal relationship with any of the contacts

The purchase of your kind of product has dropped in priority vis À vis others on your primary contact's plate (or that of his or her boss)

Regardless of the reason, at this point the opportunity clearly isn't going your way, and it may or may not be salvageable. You have a couple of options to try:

Reach out, as before, to someone else in the prospect's organization who's been involved in the evaluation and have that person tell you what's going on. Based on what you learn, you can get a communication to your primary prospect—either directly via voicemail or email, or indirectly through this other contact—that addresses the situation and hopefully gets you speaking again.

You can mail (yes, mail—he's not opening your email, remember?) a surrender letter which is the business equivalent of waving a white flag of surrender, but with a twist: you fall on the sword and suggest that you may have failed them in some way, and request that he share with you why they made the decision they did.

A tactic to use to pre-empt this disappearing act from happening at all (made popular by the Sandler Sales Institute) is to have a gentleman's agreement at the start of the engagement that says, in effect, that if one party decides to cease discussions, he or she will extend the professional courtesy of informing the other—either proactively, or reactively by responding to a call or email, rather than ignoring the person. Then, if it does happen, your next message contains a reminder of the agreement you had initially made. An honorable other party should not ignore such a message, and you should get your call back. At that time, based on what you're told, you may be able to save the opportunity.

There's only so much one can do to deal with unresponsive people. Try these ideas and let me know how they work by leaving comments below.

About Craig James

Sales Solutions founder Craig James has over 15 years' experience in sales and sales management, primarily in technology and software. He's helped dozens of sales people, business owners, and entrepreneurs sharpen their selling skills and close more business, faster. Craig has been published and been… more